One hundred and fifty years ago, on the same day General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Fairfax County witnessed the last gun battle of the war.
Just five months earlier, Confederate Col. John Mosby had been authorized to expand his force that had effectively harassed the Federal forces around Washington. On Saturday, April 8, half of Mosby’s force left Upperville on a mission to attack a train on its way to Alexandria. On Sunday, April 9, the same day Generals Lee and Grant were meeting to sign the Confederates’ surrender, the Southern Rangers were nearing Burke where they were going to attack the train station. At this time, the Federal forces at Fairfax Station heard of Mosby’s forces and sent the 11th Illinois Cavalry under Captain Warner to intercept them.
For four or five miles, the two groups engaged in a galloping fight. Once they formed into battle lines against each other, but the rest of the time Union Cavalry chased Mosby’s Rangers towards Bull Run, the stream that served as an informal dividing line between the Fairfax County that was under Federal control, and Prince William and Loudoun counties that were less secure from a Union perspective.
Mosby’s forces crossed the stream at Wolf Run Shoals in the Clifton area, and the Union forces did not chase them any farther.
The next day, two of Mosby’s Rangers who had been involved in this fight were talking and Lt. James Wiltshire remarked, “Has it never struck you as being a notable fact that the first big fight of the war occurred on Bull Run and the last shots of the war in Virginia were fired on the banks of that same stream?” The bookends to the Civil War in Virginia that Wiltshire was referring to was the First Battle of Manassas, and this last fight in Fairfax County the day that Lee was surrendering 150 miles away.
Today NOVA Parks owns most of the Fairfax County side of the Bull Run and Occoquan rivers, an area rich in history.